. >> howard, republicans are jumping on various gaffes obama has made from calling the attacks in benghazi bumps in the road to hedging on whether egypt san ally, to demoting israel as merely one of our allies to speaking at the u.n. and not meeting with my diplomats, which chuck todd called odd this morning. tell me. i want someone that i trust like you, howard, to look me in the eye and tell me with a straight face that those are not gaffes, that those are not embarrassing? >> well, i'm looking at you in the camera eye. >> all right. >> and i'm telling you that they are gaffes, and they are embarrassments. i think the president needs to be held to account for them, and i think the whole question of security arrangements in benghazi in particularn libya in general, i think the state of our knowledge, the state of our intelligence, our human intelligence in those countries is very much open to question. i think some of the president's assumptions about the arab spring are open to question. i think they're very important issues that the president needs to deal with and should be asked about